In recent years, automation of face detection processes has progressed and digital cameras having a face detector has been increasing. By having a face detector in a digital camera, it is possible to perform automatic focus control and automatic exposure control which automatically optimize the focus and the exposure value to the face of a person of a photographic subject, and therefore, the face of a person can be shot finely.
Known face detectors include a face detector which is proposed by P. Viola et al. and which provides cascade connection of a plurality of discriminators, (P. Viola and M. Jones. “Rapid Object Detection using a Boosted Cascade of Simple Features,” in Proc. of CVPR, vol. 1, ppp. 511-518, December, 2001), and face detectors using a neural network disclosed in JP2006-301779A.
Products, such as a digital camera, have a face detector which already underwent a learning process. JP2003-323615A makes the user input characteristic feature of people frequently shot as photographic subjects to increase accuracy in detecting the face.